Friday, March 20, 2015

From the FTC, we now learn that Google has already been engaging in exactly the same behavior that Net Neutrality was needed to prevent ISP's from STARTING to do -- favoring their own content. Google's "first page" is their own "fast lane" and they blatantly use it to push their own services and demote competitors.

Isn't this the same Google that's been pushing so hard for Net Neutrality? Google is much more dominant in the search space than any ISP is in their domain -- why shouldn't they be regulated as a public utility to ensure equal and neutral access?

Unlike ISP's that still need to lay cable for each customer, search is a natural monopoly with increasing returns to scale. Compare Google's profit margins to Verizon's or consider how many ISP's you'd need to combine to reach Google's 90+% share of search.

Those who think we need the government to guard the entry point to the internet to ensure openness and neutrality should be MORE worried about Google and Search Neutrality than the top 20 ISP's and Net Neutrality.

I find it endlessly amusing at how easy it easy for extremely dominate natural monopolies like Google and NetFlix to get a bunch of clueless chumps to advocate "anti-corporate" regulation to benefit themselves.